She had packed everything. Thalia threw the worn green duffel bag carelessly onto the bed, and while holding a four year old Jason's stuffed bear in her left hand, she tried to fit one of her sundresses into the bag. Her mother yelled for her to hurry up.

"I'm packing as fast as I can!" she yelled, looking up at where her mother would be yelling from and flipping that piece of ceiling the bird, mouthing a silent profanity. Jason toddled into the room a few minutes later, sucking his thumb happily. Thalia had always kept him far away from her mother, her boyfriends and her publicists, and had tried to give him a good upbringing, as good as what a twelve year-old girl could give at least. She hadn't learned exactly firsthand what a good upbringing was, but she had seen some television shows that gave her some ideas. She tried to teach him what life skills she had, and tried to make him happy, taking him for walks, scrounging for money to buy him ice cream, and even stealing her mother's credit card once to give him the Christmas presents she had never gotten. She arranged for him to go to a preschool while she was at her school, making sure that the teachers knew that no one but her was allowed to pick him up.

"Tally?" Jason's pet name for her snapped her out of her thoughts, "I want my bear, puh-lease?

Thalia grinned as she took the bear out of the bag she had just packed it in. she walked over and scooped up the young boy, handing him the bear and kissing him on the nose, chuckling as Jason held out the bear for her, and she kissed the bear's nose too. Sliding her giggling brother onto her back she picked up the duffel bag, and climbed the stairs. They were going on a family trip, (ew…) as her mother's manager had told her that if she didn't spend some time with her children, the headlines on tomorrow's magazines would be covering how she neglected them in favour of fame. Thalia had laughed when she heard this, earning her a fat lip and a bruised cheek.

They were heading to a hotel by the sea, and her mother was in a particularly bad mood because she wasn't allowed to bring Danny, one of her 'boyfriends' (read man-toy). So to compensate, she had packed a dozen bottles of Smirnoff, Italian wine and two or three bottles of vodka, only the good stuff.

Thalia watched the scenery rush by as the car drove down the twisting roads, Jason was making sound effect noises for the tiny action figures he had clutched in his tiny hands, every now and then, he would throw one of them at his sister, just to see how she reacted. Pushing down her less than pleasant thoughts, she would smile and pick the toy up from the ground, making it fly back to her brother's hands as he eagerly reached for it. It was a long and tiring trip, even for the normally energetic four year old, Thalia had to carry his sleeping form in one arm as she also carried their bag, and her mother's bag full of alcohol.

Her mother checked in, making sure to open another button of her shirt so that the man checking them in could see right down the front. He stuttered as he clumsily tried to pick up the keys to their room, swallowing hard as she took the keys and gave him a sultry look. Nauseous, Thalia looked away, as Jason stirred in her arms, making a yawning sound, she grinned at the sleeping blonde haired boy; she didn't even mind that he was drooling on her thin white shirt.

Her mother sighed impatiently as she held the door open for her suitcases, while Thalia attempted to carry all the bags and Jason at the same time. She looked at her mother in disgust, before straightening and dropping the bag that contained her mother's drinks down the stairs. Her mother cringed as she heard the bottles inside crash every step along the way, and soak the inside of the bag. Thalia put on an overly contrite expression, exclaiming in a voice laced with sarcasm and poison, "Oh gosh! I am soooo sorry! It just slipped right out of my hand!"

Destiny Grace just clenched her teeth, and gave her a fake smile that came out in a grimace. Beckoning jerkily for her children to hurry along into the elevator, she shouted for one of the staff to clean up the mess. Thalia walked tensely inside as the metal doors slammed shut, she positioned Jason on the arm furthest from her mother as she dropped the rest of the bags in between them. The elevator ride was an icy quiet, Thalia wondered how her brother could sleep through the deafening silence. Finally they reached their room; it was furnished in a grungy 50's styled carpet, and large wicker furniture, the two beds had a pale green bedspread, with a grey woollen sheet flung over them. Thalia was surprised; her mother wasn't throwing a fit over the grungy decor. She was already gone, having left her daughter to unpack alone. Thalia carefully lay Jason down on one of the beds, her heart squeezing as his hands reached out for her again, and he whimpered from the loss of warmth. She tucked him into the lime coloured covers, making sure to tuck the sheets up close to his chin.

Thalia grinned at the sight of her sleeping brother, his hands curled into half-fists, and his mouth slightly open in a slight o. His eyes wandered beneath their lids aimlessly, causing her to wonder what he was dreaming about. He mumbled and stretched out on the bed, reminding Thalia of a kitten she had once seen sleeping on a trash can lid when she was five. She had taken the kitten, and tried to feed it some of her mother's wine, not understanding why the creature wouldn't drink the strong crimson liquid.

She had been upset when her mother had told her that she couldn't keep it, and had told her that she would get her manager to take care of it. Like the naïve five year she had been, she had relinquished the tiny animal to her mother's manager, only to find it road kill on the street of their school the next day.

She smoothed some of the golden hair out of the boy's face and silently promised not to let him end up like her kitten. And after shoving the faded green duffel bag under the bed, Thalia crawled under the covers next to her brother and succumbed to the exhaustion that had been her companion along the trip.

Thalia's dreams were never pleasant, all of them were vivid, colourful dreams, where she knew exactly what was happening, and still had the memory of who she was. She had dreams of monsters, the monsters that she caught glimpses of in crowds or under hoods that covered their scaled or hairy faces. She had dreams of flying, where she vainly tried to control the tumbling, tossing winds that her father sent to knock her out of the sky. She had dreams about a boy, a beautiful blonde boy who had the wings of an angel, but instead of them being on his back, the gold and silver angel wings attached themselves to his ankles, allowing him to fly alongside her, smirking slightly, as if he knew something that she desperately was trying to learn. And then she would wake up, she would hear Jason crying, and she would go and get one of his bottles to calm him with.

But now, she woke up to silence, Jason wasn't crying, it didn't sound like the boy was breathing. Her eyes snapped open as she searched for his form under the covers, the warm indent that he left was there, but there was no sleeping body there. She jerked harshly out of bed, yanking back the covers to confirm her fears before dashing madly out of bed to search the room. He wasn't in the hotel room, and neither was her mother, disjointed thoughts and facts tumbled around in her head while her teeth bit into her bottom lip as she ran wildly toward the elevator, taking the stairs two at a time when it didn't come fast enough. She tore through the lobby, ignoring the disapproving glares, until she got to the front desk.

"My brother, have you seen my brother-" She gasped trying to catch her breath, "have you seen a blonde four year old boy wandering around?"

The front desk man looked down derisively at her, he had small round glasses, tiny eyes and a long pointed face, and he also had a thin grey moustache that seemed to twitch slightly as he talked in a slight accent that suggested he was born somewhere in Europe, "I'm sorry, I have not seen him, but can you please refrain from playing games in the lobby? People are trying to check in."

"Well they can wait their damn turn!" Thalia shouted, earning everyone in the lobby's attention, "look, I'm not playing a game, I'm looking for my missing brother. Destiny Grace checked in here earlier, did you see her leave the building?"

"I'm sorry, but we keep everything we know about our guests confidential, if you could wait here a moment I-"

"She's my mother!" Thalia interrupted, completely fed up with the man, "Tell me whether you saw her leave!"

"Yes, she left around ten minutes before you got here miss." The man swallowed and fingered his tie nervously, he offered her a fake helpful smile, probably trying to make up for his rudeness to Destiny Grace's daughter, but she was already gone.

She ran out into the streets, she didn't know where exactly she was going but she somehow knew exactly where to find them. She sprinted out of the small town, out to the cliffs that separated the sea and the land. The cliffs were massive walls of rock; the waves broke against them in crashes, and her footsteps matched each crash as she ran. Off in the distance she saw a huddled form near the edge of the cliff, and with panic clawing at her chest she stopped. It was a woman's form that was heaped; sobbing by the edge, but there was no laughing, crying, whimpering, burping, giggling, playing, living boy anywhere. Thalia's mind seized on her mother's shaking body; she walked slowly, like a zombie, towards her.

"What did you do?" Thalia choked out, as she reached hearing distance from her mother. Her hands trembled, and her heart was in her throat, but strangely she felt calm, almost as if she were in a trance. Her mother sputtered a few incoherent sentences, in a distant, indifferent part of Thalia's mind, she remembered how her mother could go from totally on top of things to completely disoriented and out of control in a heartbeat, that same unattached part of her also knew that a daughter should never have to be worried that her brother's life was endangered by his own mother. But, then again, she never had been his mother anyway. "Destiny. What did you do with him?"

"gone… he's gone, gone, gone… he's gone and he won't come back…"

Ice flooded her veins as her throat constricted, She took the fragments of her mother's broken statement and tried fitting them together in any way possible that didn't mean that her brother was dead, gone. She took her mother's arms, and shook slightly, turning the woman's tear ravaged face towards her, "what do you mean? What do you mean he's gone? What did you do?"

She was yelling, the waves were crashing against the cliffs but it felt like they were crashing over her, the icy cold December water tumbling over her and taking away her restraint and replacing it with blind panic and anger; she shook her trembling mother again before realizing that her mother wasn't upset about her son's disappearance. He's gone, and he won't come back, her mother was sobbing not over her son's death, but from her father's departure. Rage took over the panic, she threw the slumped form of her mother back to the ground in disgust, whatever had happened here had resulted in her brother's death, and it was all Destiny Grace's fault.

"You tried to get his attention." Thalia stated, her own voice deadly quiet carrying just above the now howling winds and the angry waves, "you tried to get his attention, by killing your own son?"

Destiny Grace's heaving dry sobs didn't register to Thalia's ears, this wasn't her mother, this was a monster. Thunder rumbled distantly, as if making a point to show how loud it could be. Thalia swore at the sky, screaming profanities as she stuck her middle finger up to the storm clouds. Her father was watching, always watching.

"He wasn't yours to take from me!" she screamed, sliding to her knees as she continued to yell, her hands out, as if offering herself in exchange for her dead brother, "You never cared for him! He was your son and you don't even know what his favourite color was!"

It wasn't relevant at all, but Thalia found these small facts to be extremely important as she yelled up at her father, "I know you were watching! I know you sat by and did nothing!"

The heaped figure of Destiny Grace sat up wide eyed as rain came pouring down from the sky. Lightning struck the sea again and again, while the winds keened and swept the rain from the air, whirling around the slumped, anguished form of her daughter. The lightning flashed, lighting the sky, and bleaching the girl's pale skin a sharp white, while her hair was swept back from her face, causing her to look absolutely terrifying. Destiny Grace was suddenly more scared than she had ever been in her life, because this might be the end of it.

Thalia looked down at the vulnerable form of her mother, so easily could she twitch a finger, and the woman could be out of her life forever. Her entire body pulsed with energy, life, and death, the elements belonged to her, and she felt like she could tear down Olympus if she wanted, an eye for an eye. But suddenly, she was scared, there was no control over the storm that had welled inside her, it could kill her and everyone in the town, if she allowed it to.

She inhaled, the taste of sea water and burnt earth, and then let it go. The winds died down reluctantly, the thunder retired back to its haven in the sky; the lightning followed its rumbling sister as the rain dwindled off. The stars shone through the blanket of night as Thalia Grace opened her eyes again, stood up, and walked away without a backward glance.

A few days later, she would cut her hair into a spiky, ragged mop, using a Swiss army knife that she found on the street. A few weeks later, she would steal clothes and her old beaten leather jacket from the house that she used to live in. A month later, the headlines of the newspapers would tell the public of Destiny Grace's loss, both her children dead after falling off cliffs while on vacation. In a month and a half, she would let her surname fall away until she was Thalia. Just Thalia.

gar. i apologize for my lack of updates.

FREAKING EXAMS!

i shall try to be better from now on :D

thanks for the reviewwwss :)

i tried to incorporate jason in here, even if the rest of the story past the last olympian has been taking out :$

ENJOY! :D